Hafiz Saeed. (Photo: VOA/Public domain)
New Delhi: India has requested Pakistan to extradite Hafiz Saeed, founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba and a key accused in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, to India from its soil. The request was made a few weeks ago, the foreign ministry spokesman, Arindam Bagchi, revealed during a media briefing, on Friday.
Briefing reporters on this, Bagchi said, “As you are aware, the person in question is wanted in numerous cases in India. He is also a UN-proscribed terrorist. In this regard, we have conveyed a request, along with relevant supporting documents, to the government of Pakistan to extradite him to India to face trial in a particular case.”
This comes days after Pakistani media reported that New Delhi had made such a request to Islamabad recently.
Following this, Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, confirmed that Islamabad received New Delhi’s request to extradite Saeed. She said no bilateral extradition treaty exists between the two countries for the extradition of wanted individuals.
In a brief statement, Baloch said: “Pakistan has received a request from the Indian authorities, seeking extradition of Hafiz Saeed in a so-called money-laundering case. It is pertinent to note that no bilateral extradition treaty exists between Pakistan and India.”
This essentially means that Pakistan is going to harbour the UN-proscribed terrorist, as it has been doing for decades.
It may be mentioned that soon after the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, which pointed to the involvement of Saeed’s Lashkar-e-Taiba, the United Nations listed him in its 1267/1989 al-Qaida sanctions committee as an individual associated with the al-Qaida terror group. This move subjected Saeed to international sanctions. The United States has also tagged him as a terrorist and put a bounty of $10 million on his head.
After facing severe pressure from the intergovernmental organization Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and being put in its “grey list” of countries not acting against terror financing, Pakistan arrested and tried Saeed on terrorism-financing charges in 2022. In April 2022, a court sentenced him to 33 years’ imprisonment.
However, according to credible reports, Saeed remains in house arrest and enjoys all kinds of freedom, including holding meetings with members of his group. Although he is a member of the far-right political party Milli Muslim League, he is currently backing a party called Pakistan Markazi Muslim League (PMML) and has fielded his candidates for every national and provincial assembly constituency for the 2024 general and provincial elections in the country.
His son, Talha Saeed, is a top Lashkar member and is currently reported to be preparing to contest a seat in Pakistan’s National Assembly in the 2024 general election.
Although his official profile is different, Saeed, 75, traces his origins to a Gujjar family from India’s Haryana. He claims that the family travelled to Pakistan’s Punjab during Partition. He further claims murderous mobs in India killed 36 members of his family while on their way to Pakistan.
